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Paperback: 251 pages
Publisher: IVP Books (August 27, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0830836322
ISBN-13: 978-0830836321
Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
Purchase: Amazon.com

Thanks to IV Press for sending me a free review copy. Their generosity in no way effects my review.

The Story of God, the Story of Us by Sean Gladding is a very interesting book. That seems very “high school book report” of me to start out with, but the book is very unique.

Summary
To start off, the book is unique in genre. The book is essentially relaying the macro-story of the Bible, and as such it serves as a mini-biblical theology. At the core of this biblical theology is the twin themes of exile and exodus, which are the very themes I’ve been writing about in a series at ModernMarch.com (you can see the initial post here). The book is not merely a biblical theology in the sense of Goldsworthy, or even the work of Waltke and Thielman. In fact, its far from academic theology. Gladding’s book is actually narrative theology—literally the telling of the story of the bible in narrative form. The book contains twelve chapters that serve to tell the story from creation to consummation. The first eight chapters are the Old Testament, told through the stories of creation, catastrophe, covenant, community (exodus and sinai), conquest, crown, and conceit. The last four chapters are the New Testament told through the stories of Christ, cross, church, and consumation.

The format of the book is what makes the reading so engaging. The stories are told from the perspective of several key people. The stories from the Old Testament come from an elder Israelite, as he teaches a group of people the stories of Israel while in Exile. The people gather each Sabbath to hear the elder tell them the story of their people and their God. Other key players in these chapters are the musician, who leads them in the Psalms, and struggles with his anger towards the Babylonians, and an inquisitive little girl whose thoughtful questions are reflective of our own. At the end of the Old Testament section, the people are still in exile with a deep hunger for the expected Messiah to come. The New Testament section is narrated by an older woman who hosts a church in her home. She shares the story of the Bible up through the section on the church (mostly Acts, with some of Paul’s letters) to a gentile businessman who has recently started attending their daily agape feasts. In the last chapter, Consummation (the book of Revelation), we find ourselves 30 years later, and the same gentile businessman is now hosting a church in his own home.

As the story of the Bible is told, quite a bit of the narration is taken from the biblical text itself. The oddity here is the translations that Gladding has chosen to use. The Old Testament is presented using the text of the NASB, while the New Testament story is told using Eugene Peterson’s The Message.

Thoughts
Let me begin this section by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There is a lot in this book that I resonated with in my studies of biblical theologies. I was just telling a pastor friend of mine not too long ago that the biggest frustation I have with the church today is that there is a large ignorance of the story of the Bible and how it all fits together. Gladding does a good job of showing us the big picture, and how the various parts come together to tell the story.

It should be noted that Gladding and I come from two very different theological tribes. I am more reformed and complimentarian, while Gladding, it seems, is more Wesleyan, egalitarian, and seems involved with the New Monasticism movement. Even with such differences (and his views do come out from time to time), I greatly enjoyed this book and learned much from Gladding. Some from my particular tribe, however, will see these things and automatically write the book off.

As I said, these differences do come out, but some more than others. For instance, a comment made in the book that was almost “throw-away” in nature caught my eye in the chapter in creation. After going through the first creation story, the elder begins to tell the second creation story with a comment that some believe the second story to be the older story. This is definitely a reference to the documentary hypothesis theory, but nothing more is said of it and the comment was quite casual and easy to miss.

One thing that did disappoint me in this book was the translations chosen to tell the stories. The NASB is notorious for how wooden it is, and this comes out painfully clear when the musician leads the group of people in singing the Psalms. There is no rhyme or meter to any of the songs, which only served to disrupt the flow of the narrative and remove my imagination from the story. One moment, I was picturing myself among the exiles listening to the elder, the next I was quickly skimming over the psalm because how awful it sounded coming from the musician. In the New Testament, the Message was equally frustrating, but not because it was a paraphrase. In fact, the paraphrase nature of the Message lent itself quite nicely to the style. The problem with the Message is that sometimes Peterson’s paraphrase is, well, hokey. For something that tries to be contemporary, it contains a lot of phrases that no one would utter under any normal circumstance and sound just like a B-movie script.

One thing that I really liked about the book were the questions that were asked of the three main story tellers. They are question I’ve asked, and that others have asked me. For example, after talking about the conquest of Canaan, the little girl asked why God would command the slaughter of so many people. The old man replies, “I don’t know” before giving her answers that “others” have thought. Usually, the answers given to these questions reflect the best answers we can give, but the “I don’t know”s echo with us. We have answers, but ultimately, we can only go on what is revealed to us. But in each, you can hear and feel, and even identify, with the struggle, awe, and eventually hope, that swirl inside both those who ask the questions, and those who answer them.

In the end, I found The Story of God, the Story of Us to be a good, fun read that wonderfully explains the story of the Bible. Despite some differences here and there, the book was a nice break from the usual “academic” volumes I’m used to and gave a breath of fresh air. Sure, a lot of people who tend to line up with me in some theological aspects will skip over this book because of certain issues, but in many cases this is unfortunate. For other cases, however, this is for the best, because they’ll allow those differences to speak much more loudly than they ought, and drown out the beauty of the rest of the story.

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Things have been really quiet here recently, but I wanted to direct your attention to a post I wrote for a blog called Modern March. This blog is the first of several I’ll be writing on the themes of exile and exodus in the Bible for MM.

Exile and Exodus – Introduction

Modern March is a blog started by Brandon Smith. He recently asked if I would be willing to join as a co-writer, and I said absolutely. Be sure to check it out. I will still be writing here from time to time, but seeing as how its another semester, frequency will vary.

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Quote on Church Planting

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on church planting this year as I start to lay some foundational ground work for a potential church plant in the future. This semester I’m taking an introduction class on church planting, and loved this quote from one of our texts:

“If God has called a person to be a church planter, what a pity if that person should stoop to become the president of a nation”

-Charles Brock, Indigenous Church Planting: a Practical Journey

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The Macro-Story of the Bible

While the Bible is a multi-volume set, containing 66 different books by about 40 authors, and many genres, it is also one grand story from beginning to end. The grand story (sometimes called a meta-narrative) goes something like this:

God created everything and proclaimed that it was good (much to the chagrin of gnostics and people who hate the environment). The culmination of the creative process finds two people, Adam and Eve, in a luscious garden paradise called Eden. There, they were to cultivate, cultivate their relationship with God, cultivate their relationship with each other, and cultivate creation itself. Adam and Eve disobey God, rebelling against him, and place the world and humanity under a curse. The rest of the Bible is God’s outworking of a plan to redeem everything. As we travel through the Scripture, we see God promising to usher in this redemption through the person and work of Christ, who now reigns from heaven awaiting the day that he returns to fix everything by uniting earth and heaven. The final scene sees God reigning on a renewed earth, pictured as a garden-city, filled with those who have put their trust and faith in Christ from all of history.
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Was Job a Historical Person?

In my review of Tremper Longman III’s How to Read Exodus, I mentioned that Longman briefly discusses his view on the book of Job—namely that he views it as book of historical fiction with a theological purpose. In that review, I stated that I disagreed with Longman’s view. Today, blogger friend Jeff at Scripture Zealot posted a short post on why he believes Job was a real person, quoting from Ezekiel who mentions Job alongside Noah and Daniel.

I thought I would chime in and mention my reasons for agreeing with Jeff over Tremper. Before I give the two reasons for that, I’d like to say that I would have no problem taking Job as ahistorical, and the book of Job as a theological parable. If that was the author’s intent, then we must in fact take the book that way. In the end, I don’t think that was the author’s intent. Here are the two main reasons why:
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Paperback: 187 pages
Publisher: IVP Academic (September 30, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0830838589
ISBN-13: 978-0830838585
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches

Thanks to IV Press for sending me a free review copy. Their generosity in no way effects my review.

One of the things that has become apparent through my reading and studying of the Bible is that the exodus is one of the most important events in redemptive-history. Indeed, more than an event, the exodus is a reoccurring theme finding its fulfillment in the work of Christ and the new creation. Tremper Longman’s book, How to Read Exodus, is a concise study focusing primarily on the book and event of the exodus, and then looks at how the theme can be seen throughout the Bible and into the New Testament.
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The book of Revelation must be read with the original audience in mind as well as the church throughout history. Those who ignore the former will have crazy interpretations like helicopters and atomic bombs. Those who ignore the latter will miss out in applying the text correctly, if at all.

This isn’t a brilliant thought to most of you, but a “duh” thought. As it should be. But I was talking about Revelation to a friend (amongst other issues such as the reliability of the Old and New Testaments) the other day and it’s been on my mind since.

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The Messiah's Rule of Peace

I’ve been re-reading through Isaiah lately, and it feels like I’ve never read it before. The themes of exile and the new exodus seem to be running wonderfully amok. The imagery of Eden and the curse are leaping off the pages. It feels like a stroll down the Emmaus road. While that particular imagery isn’t in the following passage I want to share, the meaning is very much the same: the end of sin, the ushering in of peace, and the rule of the King.

Isaiah 9:1-7 (NLT)

1 Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory.

2 The people who walk in darkness
will see a great light.
For those who live in a land of deep darkness,
a light will shine.
3 You will enlarge the nation of Israel,
and its people will rejoice.
They will rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest
and like warriors dividing the plunder.
4 For you will break the yoke of their slavery
and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders.
You will break the oppressor’s rod,
just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.
5 The boots of the warrior
and the uniforms bloodstained by war
will all be burned.
They will be fuel for the fire.

6 For a child is born to us,
a son is given to us.
The government will rest on his shoulders.
And he will be called:
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 His government and its peace
will never end.
He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David
for all eternity.
The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies
will make this happen!

The yoke of slavery broken. The oppressor’s rod shattered. The military uniforms burned. War will only be a memory. All due to the birth of a child, who will rule a kingdom of shalom.

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Whole Person Mission

A soul without a body is a ghost; a body without a soul is a corpse. The gospel is addressed to living persons, sou and body, in all of their broken humanity and need for wholeness.

-E. Stanley Jones, quoted in Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey

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Happy Independence Day!

[HT: Justin Taylor]

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